snail games

Here’s another one we’ve never heard of: Blade Reborn. It’s a Snail Games mobile game, and the studio is calling it a full-fledged action MMORPG, though maybe OARPG would be more accurate.

“Blade Reborn gives players a whole new game experience of dungeon explorations with Action features, in-combat weapon switching mechanics and tons of unique PVP modes. Players have found out the deepest secret in the dungeon with the choice of 3 distinct warring classes: The Fast-immortal wizard, the incomparable warrior, the Silent fatal assassin, each of those class wields 2 weapons with 4 unique skills, which empowers them to attack with destructive combos. Furthermore, there are up to 64 skill talents can be used to create a unique build for the character.”

Apparently, today’s launch is being touted as a soft-launch for Australia and Northern Europe following a Russian and Brazilian beta that’s just concluded. The company’s Facebook says the global release is set for March 27th.

Voxel fans, dinosaur fiends, and survival sandbox freaks have surely had their eyes on PixARK since its original announcement last summer. It’s one of Snail’s many (many!) ARK Survival Evolved spinoffs, and the company has just hardened up its early access release date: March 27th. That’s for both Steam and Xbox One. “PixARK will be coming to retail and digital on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Xbox One X later in 2018,” Snail says.

We previously noted that in spite of its cutesy graphics, it seemed like much more of a cutthroat survivalbox than its closest MMO cognates, but development on Steam suggests plenty of sandbox builder goodness too. Snail is touting both single-player and online multiplayer, collections, base-building, character progression, character customization, procedurally generated worlds, a sandbox mode, eight biomes, and 100 dinos and critters to “tame, train, and ride.”

There’s a new trailer to celebrate the occasion, naturally. It’s down below.

The best word to describe what was happening on the launch day of RIFT Prime was “surreal.” It was absolutely surreal to see crowds of players running around in the low-level zones, and more than one person made the observation that it felt like the original launch day all over again.

I had to concur. With guilds forming left and right on the new progression server, players scrambling over each other to try to grab quest objectives, and fishing lines as far as the eye could see, it was a sight not seen in the beginning zones of RIFT since March 2011. And also as in 2011, everyone here on this progression server was paying a subscription to be a part of this new, tailored experience.

It’s a weird bird, too. RIFT Prime isn’t exactly vanilla, but it does offer a way to go back to the core game without some of the “fast lane” features (like instant adventures) to zip up through the levels. It strips all players of their extra starting bonuses, save for the special cash shop packs that kind of ruined this pristine level starting field.

It was a good, strong start, at least as far as my limited observations perceived, but what was playing RIFT Prime really like? After a couple of days on this new server ruleset, I have a few thoughts about both the good and bad of RIFT’s stab at a progression shard.

Dark and Light players are probably still irritated over last week’s patch delay and rollback – Snail hears you. “February was a hectic month, and there were a lot of different aspects of Dark and Light that we wanted to work on,” the team says in its community letter this week. “We delayed patches and content so that we could address further issues and improve content.”

The good news is that it’s released its promised March timeline with a patch every week starting March 8th. The first three tackle bugs, optimization, and quality-of-life upgrades, while the last patch of the month includes the Air Temple.

“As you can see, the new PvE experience has been pushed to the end of this month. […] We have a new community event planned for the week before and leading up to the patch on 3/29, and we’ll have more information on that event in the near future.”

That does mean a delay until April for the dev kit currently in testing.

With the opening of RIFT Prime on March 7th, players are showing an increased interest in this nearly seven-year-old MMO. One thing that everyone might not realize, especially if they are only now contemplating a return to the game, is that Trion has much more in the works than just the new server ruleset.

Patch 4.4 contains the new Tenebrean Prison warfront for PvP players, two additional armor sets, a pair of instant adventures (one in Moonshade Highlands and one in Droughtlands), and some of the goodies for the seventh anniversary (ever wanted a little pet unicorn?). Blood storm dragon, desert snail, and balloon mounts also look to be in the works.

There are no doubt people who play ARK: Survival Evolved primarily because it provides a robust environment to play a survival game. There are also no doubt players who play the game chiefly because it means getting to ride and interact with dinosaurs. Members of the latter group will get another option in that category on March 22nd, when ARK Park releases for all virtual reality players who want to interact with some dinosaurs.

Of course, the game was originally planned to launch back in December of last year, with fans becoming painfully aware that the game was not going to hit its launch date before the delay was actually announced. But it’s going to be here in just a bit over a month, so eager players can hope that the delay was worth it. The launched game will be available in both a standard and deluxe edition, with the latter including additional outfits and an exclusive dinosaur mount.

Bad news for the Dark and Light fans who were eagerly working on their mobile fortresses, as the game’s developers had to push out a rollback and that meant players lost a whole lot of progress. An apology was offered to the players, but apologies don’t let you fly a doom fortress through the sky while laughing at the people stuck on the ground, does it?

The bright side (to an extent) is that the developers also cancelled the game’s Friday stream so that everyone could be troubleshooting the game to avoid something like tis happening again, so it does appear to be getting taken seriously. That also doesn’t fix lost progress, but it is edifying. Another development stream is planned for this week to discuss the upcoming air cave, so at least you can rest assured that there will still be places to explore when your mobile fortress is finally complete.

So you’re a Minecraft kind of soul. You like that sort-of-pixelish-but-not-really look. Your friend is an ARK: Survival Evolved junkie. She’s more about dinosaurs and that flavor of survival. You both want some character creation and character progression and fantasy touches. Where can you both be happy? Why, PixARK, of course. It’s like ARK and Minecraft had a baby, and that baby has lots of jagged edges and monsters roaming around.

It’s an unusual baby.

Yes, PixARK has just been announced for a planned March Early Access kickoff, with full release taking place later this year. We don’t know a whole lot about the game just yet, but you can get some sense of what it’s aiming for with the trailer and some screenshots below. If you’d like the survival sandbox elements with a bit more craft and a bit less stabbing others in the face, this might be something to keep an eye on.

Blizzard has a habit of sneaking in semi-secret content into its patches for the community to discover, and this time around, it’s all about mail. Snail mail, that is. In a video game.

World of Warcraft’s Patch 7.3.5 contained a world-spanning hidden quest chain that involves the postal service, and it has players buzzing over it. By picking up a piece of lost mail in Dalaran (or buying it on the auction house if you’re lazy), players are called into service under the town’s postmaster to help sort and deliver mail all over the place. The quest uses a sorting minigame and the actual in-game mail to proceed, so there’s a meta element involved as well.

With the return of Johnny Awesome and special rewards like titles, a summonable mail carrier, a pet, and an heirloom upgrade, it’s a fairly worthwhile quest chain to complete. Plus, it’s something to take your mind off of the endless Legion invasions and world quest grind, so why not?

The developers also have lots of plans about what will be added fresh to the game in 2018, although the update is rather mum on what those additions will be. It is clear that the feedback from the community about new spells has been taken into account and passed along to development, so you can expect to see some of those offerings available. Beyond that? You’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully it’ll be cool.

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

A couple of weeks ago I covered 20(ish) MMORPGs that we are looking forward to seeing develop, test, and launch in 2018. But as you well may know, Massively OP covers a small university’s worth of “not-so-massively” multiplayer games that have some crossover into the MMO space. We do this because it gives some people much-needed gripe fuel and also because a lot of our readership is also interested in these games.

There is a lot of movement in the multiplayer game space, especially as the larger video game market continues to adapt and hew to MMO design. It’s a blended mess as we continually try to sort these games out into their proper categories, but while we do that, you can enjoy this list of 20 multiplayer games that you should be tracking in 2018. From survival sandboxes to pirate simulators to sequels, here we go!

I’m afraid ARK Park, the virtual reality spin-off of ARK Survival Evolved led by Snail Games, is not going to make its planned December launch on PSVR. You probably figured that out when you realized there’s not much time left to launch in. In fact, as Snail Games announced today, the game has been delayed to the spring of next year because it “is still in development.”

“We are truly sorry for any disappointment this delay might cause,” Snail writes. “It warms our heart to see so many of you can’t wait to get your hands on ARK Park. As much as we are just as excited to see the final result, the game needs a bit more polish and optimization. We are firm believers in publishing a game only when it is fully developed.”

When launched, the game is expected to boast 10 maps, dino breeding mechanics, multiplayer activities, a puzzle-like crafting-and-discovery system, and a battle mode.